CHAPTER TWO

 

Jack's eyes snapped open as the Beretta fell out of his hands and clattered onto the table. His heart slammed against his ribs as he shot backward.

He exhaled hard to catch the breath he'd been holding and scrubbed his face with his fists. His gun had never misfired before.

I pulled the trigger. Why didn't it fire? He checked the safety. Off.

"Jack! I know you're here."

Jack jerked his head toward the open stairwell leading down to the garage. The kitchen door hadn't been replaced after the investigators had taken the man's body away. He heard Ray moving through the garage, knowing he would take advantage of the missing door.

The Harley’s horn beeped. "I found your Jeep and bike. I thought you said your garage was too small for both of them."

Jack realized then, the loud bang he'd heard was the garage door slamming closed, not his Beretta discharging.

Goddammit!

Bolting to his feet, Jack looked around. Did he really want Ray seeing what had very nearly gone down here?

Quickly, he grabbed his note and slid it into his jacket's side pocket. At the same time with his other hand, he flipped on the Beretta’s safety and stuffed it into the waistband at the back of his jeans. He left the whiskey and glasses where they were, then slid the tiny urn behind the bottle, hoping Ray didn’t see it.

"What are you doing?" Jack spun to see Ray stepping onto the landing at the top of the stairs. He continued into the house and walked over to stand beside the dining table. "Drinking?" He nodded to the bottle.

"So what?"

"So what? That's all you can say?" Ray threw his hands onto his hips and waited for Jack to continue. When he didn't, Ray asked, "Where've you been, ese?"

Jack saw the looks of both anger and worry on his friend's face. "What are you doing here?"

I haven't seen you in days. You're not answering your phone or replying to messages and no one has seen you. It's like you dropped off the face of the planet. You worried the hell out of me, so I asked Haniford to run a trace on your phone."

"You pinged my phone?" Jack asked in disbelief. "How dare you—" Note to self: leave the phone behind when you try this again, asswipe.

"GPS is a great thing."

"You had no right hunting me down just because I wasn't answering my phone," he spat.

"I'm your closest friend, so I absolutely have the right. You don't tell me you're going off-grid after what happened here," Ray waved a hand toward the bloody wall, "and I'm going to be concerned. So, you’re goddamn right I pinged your phone. Now alarm bells are going off, finding you sitting here with a bottle." Jack didn't need to be chastised like a petulant child. He moved past Ray and into the living room long devoid of furnishings to put space between them. "Don't walk away from me."

Ray spun him around by the upper arm in the center of the room.

"Step off, man," Jack growled. Jerking out of Ray's grasp, he nearly fell into the blood-stained highchair. He pulled himself upright and stomped to the window. After taking a few deep breaths to compose himself, Jack finally gazed back at his friend. The instant he saw Ray’s genuine look of concern, he regretted his tone. "Sorry. It's just . . . . Everything's gotten on top of me the last few months and I needed some down time."

"I get it, but you need to keep me in the loop."

Jack looked out the window and saw the fading day had already turned the sky a pale yellow—the golden hour—so he knew it would be dark soon.

"You don't need to worry about me. I'm fine." He would have been finer if Ray had been five minutes later. Or I'd been five minutes earlier.

Ray moved beside him but didn't say anything for a long moment. When he did, his tone was restrained. "Jack, clearly you're not fine. You never come here. At least not to just sit in near darkness. And I haven't seen you hit the bottle in nearly a year. Something's up. Talk to me."

The last thing Jack wanted to do was tell his best friend what he'd just interrupted. How the hell did he explain the real reasons why he'd ignored all the calls?

"I wasn't drinking."

"Explain the bottle and glasses on the table."

"I was—" Jack knew it would sound crazy but said it anyway. "I was talking to Nick." It wasn’t a lie. "I only had a shot."

"I remember you told me about the tradition—talk, then drink?"

"Talk, then one shot before I left his office. I was just leaving when you arrived." That wasn't a lie either.

"What did Nick have to say?" Ray asked.

Did he want to tell Ray the priest had never answered?

“He said Heaven’s great. God’s a nice guy, and he and Jesus play golf every Sunday after services—”

“For Christ’s sake, Jack. This is serious.”

Jack looked into his friend's eyes for a long moment. Had Nick sent Ray to interrupt him? The thought the old priest may have shocked Jack. A chill raced up his spine remembering all the phone calls he ignored. Jack wasn't ready to process a divine intervention, if that's what it had been, so he changed the subject.

"Why are you here?" he asked again. "Do you have an ID on the guy who offed himself here?"

"You're deflecting."

"And?"

Ray inhaled deeply and took out his notebook. "That's why I've been trying to reach you." Jack watched him angle the pages toward the light coming in from the streetlamp and flip to the page he wanted. "We ran his prints against the AFIS database. He wasn't in the system, so we checked the DMV database for prints and got a hit. Tristan Rybak. He was a junior at San Francisco State University, where he was studying for a Master’s in Humanities & Liberal Studies—good grades, clean record. Overall, a good student."

"He didn't look like any student I've ever seen. He looked and smelled pretty rough."

"For no apparent reason, he suddenly dropped off the map when he was twenty . . . about eight or nine years ago. He’s probably been on the streets this whole time."

“Nine years? Did anyone report him missing?"

"Stacey Maguire. His girlfriend at the time. She alerted campus security when she couldn't locate him for a couple days and they performed a rudimentary investigation. When the parents arrived, city cops were brought in, and a missing persons report was filed at the department. He'd been MIA until he was found here."

"Has his family been notified?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, I sent Harry and Wash over to break the news once the ID had been made."

"Were Harry and Wash able to learn anything new about the kid? Had he ever contacted them for anything . . . money, food, to come home . . . ?"

Ray shook his head. "No, but Mrs. Rybak remembered seeing a strange man standing on the sidewalk across from the house a few years ago. She said she would have been scared by a vagrant in their neighborhood, but there was something familiar about him. She turned to call for her husband to come take a look at the man, but when she turned back, he was gone. They never saw him again."

"Any idea why he chose my house to off himself?"

"None that I can tell."

"Rybak, you said?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Sounds familiar, but I don't know why it would."

"I'm sure you'll remember eventually. You usually do."

Jack just grunted. "Did you get a copy of the missing persons report . . . investigator's report . . . anything?"

"Homes, you know I did."

"Let's see what you have."

"Why don't we go back to your apartment? There's more room to spread out there. And it has power." Ray flicked his gaze toward the dark ceiling light.

Why pay for electricity and gas when no one is using it?

Was he ready to go? He'd come here for one purpose, and it hadn't included leaving. At least not vertically. He could tell Ray he'd follow him over to his place then sit back down and try eating the bullet again. Or was he curious enough now to dig into who Tristan Rybak was and why he killed himself in this house?

"Yeah, alright. I'll meet you there," Jack finally said, curiosity winning.

Ray glanced toward the darkened dining area. "You've been drinking. I'll take you home."

"I only had the one. I'm fine. I'll meet you at my place. I want to get the kitchen door back on its hinges then I need to lock up." Dealing with the door would give him an extra barrier for next time. When he returned to complete his task, he didn't want another surprise visit like the one he'd just had.

"I'll give you a hand."

Jack didn't need the help. “I got it,” he said, walking toward the kitchen. Ray followed.

Jack retrieved the door from the garage while Ray grabbed the pins from a kitchen drawer where Jack had put them for safekeeping when the door came down.

Holding the door in place while Jack maneuvered it into the hinges, Ray asked, "Were you ignoring all your calls or just mine?"

"I wasn't ignoring you specifically. I just turned off the ringer for some peace and quiet." Jack fitted the first pin into the hinge then gave it a sharp tap with a hammer, sliding it into place.

"Yeah, well, you had me worried shitless. Haniford too when I told him you were MIA."

"Sorry.”

“Is that all you have to say . . . sorry?”

“Sorry, Dad, I won’t do it again?”

“Be serious. You need to tell me the next time you want to go to ground.”

Under his breath, Jack said, “Yeah, fine.”

Jack moved to hammer in the second pin, then the last. Ray’s deep breathing told him his friend was still upset.

“Jack,” Ray started.

Jack stood up, task completed, and tested the door’s swing. No squeaks.

“Jack,” Ray said in a softened voice. “You know you can talk to me.”

He couldn’t face Ray for more than a moment before turning away. “I know. Thanks.” He felt Ray’s gaze on him as he sneaked the tiny urn into an inside pocket before grasping the tumblers and whiskey bottle off the table and taking them to the kitchen. Waste not, want not. He downed the whiskey meant for Nick then rinsed out the glasses and put them on the drainboard near the bottle.

He took his time making sure the back and front doors were secure.

“Ready?” he asked from the door he’d just hung.

“Just waiting on you.”

In the garage, Ray lifted the big door while Jack went to his Harley. He rolled it out to the small driveway and leaned it back on the kickstand. Ray pulled the door back down as Jack slid on his helmet. Lifting the visor, he pushed the automatic starter and the bike rumbled to life.

“Before I forget.” Ray pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Jack.

“What’s this?” Jack gazed at the paper, simply scrawled with Mayes and a phone number.

“Number for a lawyer.”

“Lawyer?” What the hell did a lawyer want with him? He’d sorted out his affairs before coming here. Did his estate lawyer need something? He looked at the name but didn’t recognize it. “Did they say what they wanted?”

"To talk with you. She didn't give me specifics. Just that you needed to call at your convenience. By the sound of her voice, convenience meant as soon as possible.”

“Why call you?” He looked at the paper again before stuffing it in his pocket. If it was important, they’d call him back.

“Couldn’t reach you either. I guess she had my number as backup.”

Jack threw a leg over the saddle and gloved up. “I’ll meet you at my place.”

He flipped down the visor and was on the road before Ray had opened the door of his old red Silverado truck.

Thoughts of Tristan Rybak spun in Jack’s head; what did his house or his family have to do with his suicide?